2012 Robin Badgley Memorial Student Award Recipients

This year’s winners of the Robin Badgley Memorial Student Award are Susan Haydt, PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Dalhousie University, and Andrea Polonijo, PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia.

Andrea Polonijo is a PhD student in the department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She was awarded a UBC Four Year Fellowship and UBC Faculty of Arts Graduate Award for her doctoral studies. Her research interests are centered on the sociology of health and illness, particularly on medicalization, the social construction of risk, and health inequalities.

Andrea’s dissertation research will investigate consent negotiation in the context of school-based human papillomavirus vaccination programs for adolescent girls in Vancouver, British Columbia. Through a grounded theory-driven analysis, she will examine how vaccine-related decision-making happens between adolescents and their parents, and how healthcare providers make judgments about the competence of minors for consenting to or refusing vaccination on their own behalf.

Andrea holds a MPH in Health Promotion from the University of Toronto and a BA (Honours) in Sociology from the University of British Columbia. Prior to beginning her PhD, she was a sexual health educator in Vancouver and worked on health-related research projects in Canada, the United States, and England.

She has co-authored manuscripts in a number of journals including Social Science & Medicine, Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, Journal of Gay & Lesbian Social Services, and Women’s Health Issues.

Susan Haydt is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology (Critical Health Studies) at Dalhousie University. In 2008 she was awarded the CIHR Doctoral Research Award. Her research interests include health, professions, gender, and qualitative methods.

Her dissertation research is a critical examination of the development of interdisciplinary primary care teams in Ontario. Since obtaining her MA in sociology from the University of Calgary in 2002 she has worked on a wide variety of research projects including the representation of OxyContin by the state, medical community, and media; pharmacist integration into family practice in Ontario; the readiness of rural and remote communities in Canada to adopt telehealth technologies; and the professionalization processes of project management and the Canadian military.

She has co-authored manuscripts in a number of journals including Pain Research and Management, Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy, Canadian Family Physician, Annals of Family Medicine, and Telemedicine Journal and e-Health.